For the next 7 weeks on Wednesday evenings I am teaching a series we’re calling “Burning Questions”
Over the last several months we’ve compiled questions from people in the church and now I’m going to answer those questions to the best of my ability. The questions will range from topics such as Eschatology, Angels, Creation, Prayer, and Heaven. We begin with a few songs of worship, I then introduce the question and “attempt” to answer it 
after that I open it up for discussion, and then we close with worship because even in our best effort to answer these tough questions we must concede that God’s ways are beyond our ways and His thoughts are much higher than our thoughts so we are left to simply worship Him.
Last night I began the series by answering the question…
“Why does the Lord allow us to suffer through so many trials and illnesses if He truly loves us.”
Here are my notes…
Question - “Why does the Lord allow us to suffer through so many trials and illnesses if He truly loves us?”
- First we must understand the source of evil and illness…Sin
We live in a fallen world that has yet to be redeemed (transformed) by God. Therefore we are subject to the repercussions of living in a sinful environment. Diseases, illnesses, sufferings, difficulties in this life are simply the result man’s rebellion toward God and a by-product of this evil world we live in.
- Second we must concede that we don’t understand everything…we aren’t all knowing and therefore our perspective is limited.
Just because we cannot fathom any good reason for suffering doesn’t mean there aren’t any…
Tim Keller put it like this in His book The Reason for God
“If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because He hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know.”
Often after a tragedy like the recent earthquake in Burma, 9-11, the ‘ 04 tsunami in Asia, or Hurricane Katrina people will ask questions like…
Where was God?
Skeptics will assert that, “if God is God, He’s not good. If God is good, He’s not God.” For in their minds you can’t have it both ways. If God is powerful and can stop this stuff and He doesn’t then He’s not good. Or if He’s good but He’s not powerful enough to stop it then He’s not God.
As Christians…people whose theology comes from the Bible. We know that God is both powerful and loving and that He is far beyond our ability to comprehend. Therefore it is futile for us to attempt to reconcile His omnipotence with His love.
But if God truly loves us and He’s powerful enough to intervene…why doesn’t He do something about suffering and evil?
The answer to that question is, He did and He does -
I want to look at 4 reasons why our suffering does not in any way diminish the love of God toward us…
1. He proved His love at the cross (Rom. 5:8, 8:32)
2. He loves us too much to leave us the way we are…suffering is the tool God uses to bring maturity into our lives (James 1:2-5)
3. He loves others and desires to bring comfort to them through us…God allows us to suffer so that we can comfort those who are suffering (2 Cor. 1:3-7)
4. He has eternity in mind…His love for us is eternal therefore He allows us to suffer temporally to teach us eternal lessons (2 Cor. 4:16-18)
Our suffering must drive us to Jesus… “Christianity alone among the world religions claims that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ and therefore knows firsthand despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture, and imprisonment.” (Tim Keller, The Reason for God)
We do not serve a God who stands impervious to our suffering and difficulty. He is intimately acquainted with our grief as He has experienced everything we are going through.
Our suffering must drive us to the cross…for it was there that God proved that He can bring goodness out of the most terrible events.
Jesus, the God of the Universe, was subjected to horrendous physical suffering but more than that God turned His back on Him as He poured out His wrath against sin upon His beloved Son.
On the cross he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced rejection and pain that exceeds anything we’ve ever gone through. Maybe you’ve experienced the rejection of a friend, a spouse, or a parent but none of us can fathom what it would be like to lose not just spousal love or parental love that has lasted several years, but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity. On the cross Jesus cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” This is a deeply relational statement that reveals the utter abandonment and rejection He was experiencing.
Yet even in this He did not question God’s love, for He uses the intimate term “My God” knowing that even in this God’s love was being powerfully demonstrated.
So when we look at the question, “Why does the Lord allow us to suffer through so many trials and illnesses if He truly loves us?”
And we look at the cross of Jesus, we aren’t given specific answers for our personal suffering, but we do know that the answer cannot be that He doesn’t love us. It can’t be that He doesn’t care or that He is removed from our condition. God takes our hurt and suffering so seriously that He was willing to take it on Himself.
Therefore if we embrace the Christian teaching that Jesus is God and that He suffered and died upon a cross, then we have comfort and strength to endure the most brutal realities of life here on earth. We can be assured that He is truly, Immanuel - God with us - even in our worst sufferings.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Regarding Tim Keller’s statement: Charlie Campbell says one of the God’s good reasons for allowing suffering and evil to continue is that if He were to remove it, He would have to remove us because we have all caused it (One Minute Answers, 35). To not do so, demonstrates His mercy. I think that is an awesome statement.